[Incubator] Incubator Application: deegree

[Dr. Markus Lupp]

Hi Jody

Jody Garnett schrieb:
> Hi Markus, I agree that this is a great write up and it would make a 
> good blog post/debate.
>
> One area I would like to ask for clarification on is this... Going 
> through incubation is a fine time to take stock on how a project can 
> collaborate better in the future, but I don't think incubation is the 
> correct time to try and correct areas of duplication. I am much more 
> interested in the basics; is the license open source, does the project 
> have procedures in place for people to join and contribute and control 
> the project, do we know what is in the code base etc...
>
Guess you can find some information about this in the incubation 
application at: http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/185 (the 
questionnnaire ist attached to the trac ticket)
> I would not like to see a project hesitate to join OSGeo simply 
> because they did not manage to collaborate with the first couple of 
> projects through the gate; a better time to check would be:
> - when a project asks our advice about starting up
> - as part of a yearly report
>
> If we are going to promote cross project collaboration we may want to 
> choose a different venue rather the incubation process.
I agree with you. Discussing this topic nonetheless was insightful for 
me. I will meet Cameron in March in Perth I guess, so we could discuss 
cooperation issues regarding community mapbuilder and deegree quite 
easily there. Regarding GeoTools - last time we had a look at GeoAPI (as 
Jody suggested) there were some very technical reservations from some 
deegree developers against it. But I will check again. Hoping that 
Jerome will become the incubation mentor for deegree, the road for 
collaboration with GeoNetwork Open Source might also open quite naturally.


Cheers,

Markus

> Jody
>> Hi Cameron,
>>
>> basically there is cooperation potential with all Java-based OSGeo 
>> projects. As I see it these are at the moment:
>> 1. GeoTools
>> 2. gvSIG
>> 3. Geonetwork OpenSource
>> 4. Community MapBuilder
>>
>> I will discuss those four projects in the following. Please forgive 
>> me if statements about the four projects are not correct at all 
>> times, I do not know them in much detail so far.
>>
>> 1. GeoTools
>> ------------
>> deegree and GeoTools share many similarities, they are at the core, 
>> Java libraries for geospatial applications with a focus on OGC 
>> standards. There are many opportunities for collaboration and there 
>> were several attempts to do so but I also have to say that so far all 
>> of these attempts were not successfull. At the first look the 
>> projects are so similar that someone wonders why collaboration here 
>> is so hard. IMHO there are three main reasons:
>> a) Some requirements are different. A good example is the need of 
>> deegree for a complex feature model, a requirement that GeoTools 
>> developed much later and with much less priority.
>> b) The development process seems to be different: deegree is 
>> developed for projects with tight deadlines and is in this way a very 
>> "commercial" FOSS project. Quite often, decisions have to be made 
>> fast and this leads sometime to less discussion via the list as there 
>> is on GeoTools lists.
>> c) The "not invented here" effect and other usual problems in 
>> cooperation. ;-)
>> Nonetheless I do not want to give up on this. Perhaps the fact that 
>> deegree wants to join OSGeo opens new opportunities for cooperation 
>> between the projects again. Perhaps some kind of "liasaon officer" 
>> between the to projects would help here.
>>
>> 2. gvSIG
>> Although deegree is a library, there also is by now a desktop GIS 
>> (with similarities to gvSIG) under development. On a technical level 
>> there is collaboration potential, the main problem here is that gvSIG 
>> is published under GPL, while deegree under LGPL. This is the main 
>> reason, why in the first place deegree started development of a 
>> desktop component (the companies developing deegree have customers 
>> who do not want to use a GPL-based desktop GIS program). Otherwise we 
>> would have used OpenJUMP or gvSIG. On a technical level, here again 
>> the problem is the complex feature model. There already were meetings 
>> between people from gvSIG and deegree and support for complex 
>> features seemed to be not on the top list of priority for gvSIG.
>> In regard to the license problem, the cooperation here could be 
>> "one-way", of GOS uses source code from deegree we would not run into 
>> license problems.
>>
>> 3. Geonetwork Open Source (GOS)
>> deeegre encompasses a metadata/catalogue component similar to GOS. On 
>> a technical level there is good potential for cooperation, the 
>> problem here is that GOS uses GPL while deegree LGPL.
>> Here again, "one-way cooperation" (GOS uses deegree) could work.
>>
>> 4. Community MapBuilder (CMB)
>> From the impression that I by now have, CMB shares a number of 
>> similarities with deegree iGeoPortal, they are both web-based clients 
>> for OGC web services. As CMB is published under LGPL there would also 
>> be no licensing problems. It might turn out, that the respective 
>> software architectures are too different for close cooperation, but 
>> this will only be know if there is a more thorough analysis from 
>> bothe sides.
>>
>>
>> So, regarding the OSGeo Java tribe, I would say the most cooperation 
>> potential exists with GeoTools and CMB as they share the same license 
>> with deegree.
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Markus
>>
>>
>> Cameron Shorter schrieb:
>>> Sorry for the slow response, usual excuses.
>>>
>>> Markus,
>>> It is great to hear that a well established project like deegree is 
>>> engaging OSGeo. I think deegree has a lot to offer the community and 
>>> in particular I think it will benefit all if we see further 
>>> collaboration between deegree and other OSGeo projects - something 
>>> which I think has been one of the under-reported benefits of OSGeo.
>>>
>>> One of my standard questions for new projects is to discuss similar 
>>> (OSGeo) projects and what opportunities there are for collaboration, 
>>> or if not what are the barriers.
>>>
>>> The more collaboration, the more attractive the project is as a 
>>> graduation candidate.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>>
>>> As I seem to bring up this question fairly regularly, maybe it 
>>> should be included in the OSGeo Application page.
>>>
>>> Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>> I'm pleased to announce that the deegree project has applied for
>>>> OSGeo incubation.  The application form can be downloaded (in pdf) 
>>>> from:
>>>>
>>>> http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/attachment/ticket/185/deegree_osgeo_questionnaire.pdf?format=raw 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> deegree is a Java framework including implementations of many OGC 
>>>> and ISO
>>>> standard geo interfaces.  The application was submitted by Dr. 
>>>> Markus Lupp
>>>> and I will ask him to join the incubation list if he hasn't already.
>>>>
>>>> Currently we have ten projects in incubation, so assuming we don't 
>>>> want to
>>>> raise our self imposed limit I don't anticipate bringing another 
>>>> project
>>>> into incubation immediately.  However, I am hopeful that at as many 
>>>> as two
>>>> of our current projects will be completing incubation soon at which 
>>>> point we
>>>> will be in a position to select new projects.
>>>>
>>>> The current application pending are:
>>>>
>>>> http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&component=Incubator&keywords=%7Eapplication&order=priority 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> GeoMOOSE
>>>> JVNMobileGIS
>>>> ORCHESTRA
>>>> degree
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Dr. Markus Lupp
l a t / l o n  GmbH
Kupang-NTT
Indonesia
phone +62 (0)81 339 431666
http://www.lat-lon.de
http://www.deegree.org
--